Diagnostic and therapeutic gastrointestinal endoscopy procedures are commonly used to gain access to the digestive tract for the purpose of removing tissue during biopsy procedures. Common endoscopy procedures include incision and ablation through various known mechanisms.
Techniques for obtaining tissues during biopsy procedures and/or other medical procedures involving tissue removal can be difficult. For example, regular endoscopic surveillance procedures involving multiple biopsies are advocated to detect development of dysplasia as a precancerous lesion. These procedures, which include endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR), involve the removal of a fragment (i.e., resection) of the digestive wall including the mucosal membrane. This procedure typically removes a part or even all of the submucosa. Endoscopic mucosectomy is a curative endoscopic procedure which is intended for sessile benign tumors and intramucosal cancers. The procedure makes it possible to determine precisely the nature of subsequent treatment required.
The incision devices currently utilized in biopsy procedures often make tissue removal difficult. These problems are compounded by the thick gastrointestinal wall that the incisions are performed within. Considerable time and effort is therefore required by the physician to incise and remove the desired tissue. The inability to quickly remove tissue increases patient trauma. Moreover, current incision devices cannot remove unfragmented portions of tissue. Assessment of fragmented tissue becomes increasingly difficult during sampling as compared to assessment of unfragmented tissue. Furthermore, fragmented resection of early cancers may lead to a higher rate of local tumor recurrence.
Some biopsy procedures are cumbersome and time consuming due to problems incising a tissue sample from a target site because often a separate procedure needs to be performed to incise and collect a biopsy of the target site. For example, a biopsy of the target site is typically obtained by passing a different instrument to the target site and then cutting away and removing the tissue sample. The introduction of separate devices to the patient for treating the tissue increases the procedure time and causes patient discomfort.
In view of the drawbacks of current medical devices, there is a need for a medical device that can more efficiently remove tissue and debris during biopsy procedures without the need of multiple exchanges of medical devices while significantly reducing the duration of the biopsy procedure.